Georgia
by MaySoFarAway
Summary: The lone survivor learns many things, but never forgets where she came from.


** Notes:** Random drabble that came out of nowhere, whilst plotting out other things. No plot-relation to Howl, never fear!

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She grows up, in a fashion.

She learns that people can live in large groups, in whole towns even, and get along. Even thrive, and be kind, and settle. It takes her a long time to learn what to do with her free time, of course, even as she grows it's hard for her to settle, to be still. Maybe she will be that way forever, but she channels it, she studies hard and she helps on her new family's farm from a very young age on. She learns how big farms can be, how many people they can support, all living in their own houses with their own families. No two-a-room-to-stay-alive. No watch schedules, no carrying a gun every day.

That one takes a long time to unlearn. By age eleven she finally manages to get used to not seeing every other adult with a gun on their belt, but it isn't until she's fifteen, and hasn't seen a walker for ten years, that she stops carrying her knife everywhere. It isn't until she's fourteen that she stops waking up in the middle of most nights, sweating and crying about The Baby.

The seasons are backwards in this place, but she learns them. She learns to revel in summer instead of dreading it, lying in green, growing things under the sunshine without fear. She gets a job when she's old enough, and her adoptive family praises her, loves on her, even as she holds them at a certain distance. Because they aren't her family. For all this place has so many blood families, she remembers her first family, stronger for all the people in it who did not share her blood. She lost that family. She lost The Baby. She doesn't want it to hurt the same way, if she loses this one.

Still, she thrives. Yes, there are a lot of rules in this place, rules to keep out the infected, the dying, but she'd grown up with rules. Rules kept you alive. Rules kept the people you loved alive...until the people who had no rules came along, anyway.

And that's the real reason it takes so long for Judith Grimes to stop carrying her knife, to stop thrashing in the night and reaching out for The Baby. She trusts that she'll never see another Walker again. It is people, who must earn her trust.

It was people, who raided their camp and killed everyone. Her strong Papa, even Daryl, Daryl, whom nobody could kill, who told her to run and run and run until she found the cave by the stream, to hide, to not come back to the camp no matter what she heard. They'd killed her brother, her Beth-mama, everyone, everyone. And when the screaming had stopped, when the sounds of PEOPLE taking their things stopped, Judith broke her promise and came back.

They'd killed everyone. Except the baby. The baby was missing. At four-almost-five, Judith could not fully comprehend the carnage, the gore, only that they were dead. But the baby was missing. She curled up next to Beth's still body, her pale arms frozen, reaching toward her and Daryl's tent, where the baby would be, little Georgia Dixon in her clothes-hamper-crib.

Judith was still next to Beth some days later, when the people in white suits plucked her up, catatonic and freezing, chattering over and over that they had to find Georgia.

They guessed that was where the little girl was from. Accurate, but not what she'd meant. By the time she gathered her wits, however, she was in a plane flying through the air on her way to a place where there were no Walkers, and the seasons were backwards.

She doesn't much remember being that wild, feral, mourning child, even as hints of her hide in her dark eyes, her wild, long dark hair.

She's grown up, but the faces don't leave her. And some nights she still wonders what happened to The Baby.

It's the first day home from University her third year, and as she passes through the various checkpoints between Sydney and her family's farm, Judith feels a bit of excitement. More refugees, they'd said in their last letter, the next farm over being the rehabilitation point she herself had gone through as a child. Judith loved spending her breaks with new survivors, no matter where in the world they'd come from. Hearing of how they'd survived, as well as what the epidemic had looked like for them, was as humbling as it was galvanizing. They gave her purpose.

This time, though, her heart stops at the sight of the very first face out on the veranda of the ranch-style house, blinking into the sun like a scared, long-abused, yet hopeful creature. Judith knows the feeling, almost as well as she knows the face, though she's not seen her since she was barely an infant. The wide blue eyes that easily fall into a squint, the blonde hair, the twitching fingers, the bowed mouth. Judith freezes, her breath stopping in her lungs.

The baby, she found her, they took her but Judith found her.

She calls her name and stops short, knowing for all that she knew her, Georgia Dixon couldn't possibly remember her...but then again, Beth had kept all those photos from Glenn's camera wrapped up in her blankets. The safest place, she'd said...sure enough the willowy, jittery colt of a girl stills, staring back at Judith, mapping her features and finding them in her memories. Georgia bolts for her, and Judith clutches her close, crying, saying her name over and over into her long blonde hair.

The place they'd come from, the place they'd lost, the family she'd found again. Georgia, Georgia, Georgia...

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End file.
